Ban on gay ‘conversion’ therapy on hold during Supreme Court appeal

California’s ban on “conversion” therapy that aims to turn gay youths straight will remain on hold while religious conservatives ask the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn it.

The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco upheld the law in August and reaffirmed its ruling last week. But on Monday, the appeals court granted opponents’ request for a stay while they seek Supreme Court review. In the meantime, the law, passed in 2012, remains unenforced.

The law bars licensed therapists from trying to change the sexual orientation of patients under 18. Those therapy methods have included counseling and training to encourage opposite-sex behavior, hypnosis, and aversive measures such as hormone treatment and nausea-inducing drugs.

National psychiatric and medical organizations say such treatments are deceptive and dangerous, leading in some cases to depression or suicidal impulses. But some Christian legal organizations say the state law violates free speech and the rights of parents to make important medical decisions for their children. They have sued on behalf of therapists, individual parents and children, who they say are struggling with unnatural and unwanted same-sex attractions.

In upholding the law, the appeals court said it restricts not speech but conduct, in much the same way that the state regulates other medical practices. Judge Susan Graber said in the 3-0 ruling that the law was a rational measure to protect minors’ well-being and noted that therapists can still discuss the pros and cons of sexual orientation change therapy with their patients, and can even recommend that they seek treatment in another state. She noted that psychiatric organizations stopped classifying homosexuality as a mental illness 40 years ago.

When the full appeals court denied a rehearing last week, three judges signed a dissenting opinion that said therapists’ treatment of their patients through spoken words deserved constitutional protection, and that the ruling upholding the law would enable the state to silence “politically unpopular speech.”

That’s the argument that opponents of the law will use in seeking Supreme Court review, said Mathew Staver, chairman and chief lawyer at Liberty Counsel, which represents the plaintiffs. They have filed similar arguments in New Jersey, the only other state with such a law.

“We will continue fighting to protect these young people from homosexual activists and tyrannical politicians for as long as it takes,” Staver said in a statement on Liberty Counsel’s website.